I've read about people pulling their hair out to convert their Word files to Smashwords or Kindle, or anything else in the ebook market. Well, I religiously followed cyberwitch's blog post about the Smashwords meatgrinder as they call it, and then I ran into a small glitch. There was something in Word that wasn't covered in the very excellent tutorial, here Cyberwitch Press . However, I found the solution in Smashwords Style Guide that you can download free from the site Smashwords and it give you all the tips on how to get into their premium catalog. If you list in your book a webpage, make sure you put the http:// before the rest of it. Also, if you put in your email, make sure you put mailto: before your email address, no spaces. I should know this from doing website html, it's the same. Also, I downloaded the epub check from Smashword's site and it said no errors were found. How cool is that?!
I converted my manuscripts for Kindle using the Calibre program, another great free download. Calibre ebook converter
I was kind of puzzled by the forum posts that listed all kinds of issues creating a Table of Contents for Kindle books, and once I played around with the manuscript, read different formatting ideas, I got it. 8 hours later on the first one but I got it and my formatting is Kindled and up there just fine and only took about an hour or so on the rest of the books.
I always put an excerpt of my other romances at the end of the current book. You never know what might sound interesting to the current reader. Just a little something to whet their appetite.
So I currently have 3 of 4 titles of the Women of Character Series on Kindle, with a fourth soon to be uploaded. Smashwords -- now that it's all wonderful, I will be uploading Once and Always soon. Echoes from the Past is in the Amazon KDP Select program so I can't place that elsewhere until the 90 days is up. The other books are not in the program. Right now it's slow going but I hope to generate some notice with the Facebook ad I have for my 3 books and just general putting the word out. Press releases are next on my agenda and I will be writing content for ezine articles.
Smashwords is cool because it makes your book available for iPhone, iPod Touch, Amazon Kindle, Sony Reader or Barnes & Noble Nook, or to other ereading devices. Of course I already have my book on Kindle through Amazon, so I opted out of that, but it will be available otherwise.
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